Part of it is living in Tennessee. I'm so out of the loop. And as a person, I'm out of the loop. I'm oblivious by nature.

No one should have to go back to the place where she had once been a girl.

Fiction is always really a labor.

The kind of love that offers its life so easily, so stupidly, is always the love that is not returned.

I love telling people what to read. It's my favorite thing in the world, to buy books and force books on people, take bad books away from people, give them better books.

Updike and Bellow and Roth were my three favorite writers when I was young and throughout my life.

Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.